Image recognition apparatuses include an apparatus having a function of recognizing an object based on an image photographed by a camera. As the function of recognizing an object, bar code recognition and object recognition are known. In the object recognition, image information acquired from an image photographed by a camera is compared with information on the object obtained beforehand, and an object included in the image information is recognized. In general, the object recognition has a lot of advantages but requires a long processing time. Therefore, the image recognition apparatus is required to reduce the load of the object recognition.
To solve the above problem, the embodiments are intended to provide an image recognition apparatus capable of performing object recognition at high speed.
An image recognition apparatus of the embodiment is provided with a memory, an interface and a processor. The storage stores identification information obtained from code information attached to objects, and image information on the objects used for object recognition. The storage stores the identification information and the image information for each of the objects to be recognized. The image acquiring unit acquires a photographed image. The extraction unit extracts a target object region including an object therein from the photographed image. The code recognition unit extracts code information attached to the object in the target object region and recognizes the identification information based on the extracted code information. If the code recognition unit fails to recognize an object, the object recognition unit recognizes the object based on an image of the target object region and image information on each object stored in the storage.